What's something that was dismissed as a gimmick but you liked?

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the IR Blaster, absolutely loved it and still do
- I cannot recall which phone it was, but going to sports bars in college and changing the channel on the TV to the games I wanted to watch was so cool. Probably pissed a whole lotta people off, but I was a young college shithead and didn't really register that at the time.
- Same. I keep a USB IR blaster on my keychain for the same purpose. Isn't quite as nice since I have to carry it around, but it gets the job done in a pinch
  
  Tell me more about this USB IR blaster. What do you have? How do you control it? I a. Very interested in getting one of these.
  
  It's a little keychain USB-C IR blaster. There's a few that work, but this one has a decent case: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804935230204.html
  If you look around enough, you might be able to find it cheaper too. They're basically all the same thing. I bought one, and it used the app "Zaza remote" and I really liked that app. You could read a remote and save the IR codes from remotes not in the database to make custom remotes. That one also basically seemed to be "unlocked" in a sense it seemed I could use it with a lot of apps. However, it got lost at some point from my keychain holder, so I bought a few more. Unfortunately, they used a different app called "Ocrustar" and I couldn't use it with any other app. The packaging and the blaster are identical, and there's probably no good way to tell from the listing. But the new one still works, the app just isn't as good. I can still turn down the really loud TV in the waiting rooms pretty discretely.
  The link I sent above seems to be one of the "Ocrustar" ones based on the images in the description. And the original one I bought was no longer being sold, so I couldn't just buy from that listing again otherwise I would have. The same ones are also available from Amazon for 3x the price
  
  Thank you! This makes my day.

145 comments